


reuse, recycle, resurrect

by Glitter_Lisp



Series: reboot [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Dark Humor, F/M, Grim Reaper Harry Hook, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Temporary Character Death, Temporary Character Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 06:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20869748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitter_Lisp/pseuds/Glitter_Lisp
Summary: Uma groaned and rubbed her temples. “God. So you're the Walmart greeter of the afterlife, you have a dead coworker namedChad,and vacation entails being turned into a zombie.”“I wouldn't say zombie,” Harry said.-----Ten years after his death, Harry goes on vacation: four months to return to earth, be a human, and enjoy life before he picks up the scythe and robes again.He hasn't even been back two weeks when he runs into his ex-girlfriend.





	reuse, recycle, resurrect

**Author's Note:**

> (Content warnings below, for anyone concerned)
> 
> What's this? A fic I didn't mean to write that turned into a half plot, half exposition monstrosity? How terribly out of character for me, wow, who could have seen this coming. 
> 
> Anyways I spent too much time world-building and now know more about this world than I do about my own original stories. So that's cool.

Twelve days into his vacation, Harry turned a corner and saw Uma. 

Fuck. _ Fuck. _Her plan had always been to leave. What the hell was she doing here ten years later? Visiting a friend? Stopping by their old haunts for nostalgia’s sake? Oh, god, if there was some sort of memorial service for him he was going to lose it. 

He turned around too fast, tripped over the curb, and sent his smoothie flying, _damn_ it. Uma, examining a window display not a dozen feet away from him, started and turned around. “Woah! Hey, man, are you o–”

Her breath left her in a rush. Harry swore and scrambled to his feet. “Um.”

“What the hell,” Uma said faintly. “Oh my god, I'm going fucking insane, there is no goddamn way, I'm imagining this–”

“Yes,” Harry said frantically, holding his hands up palm first toward her. “Yes, insane, you're imagining this, oh my _ god _ Mal’s going to end me, this is exactly why we're not supposed to–”

“Harry?”

His shoulders slumped. Her voice sounded so small. “Hi, Uma.”

_ “Did you fake your fucking death?” _Her voice did not sound small anymore. It sounded a little terrifying, actually; she had the sense not to start yelling in the middle of a crowded boardwalk, but Uma had always been able to pack a lot of feeling into a little volume. 

Harry stared. Shifted uncomfortably. Then said, “Yeah, sure.”

“This is not a “yeah, sure’ kind of question,” Uma snarled. “You don't get to say ‘yeah, sure,” not when you show up after _ ten goddamn years of–” _

A phone rang. Harry winced. “Look, you– you have every right to be mad, I know that. I swear I'll come back and let you yell at me some more, because I deserve it, but I really have to take this. It's work.”

“What the hell,” Uma said. She seemed to be veering wildly between shocked and furious, and she had landed on shocked for the moment. “You're seriously taking a _ work call _right now? The fuck do you do that's that important?”

“Uh, it's classified,” Harry said distractedly, willing a phone into existence so Uma wouldn't see him talking into thin air. “Hook.”

_ “There's a woman about to have a heart attack twenty feet to your left—and don't think we're not talking later about why you're so close. You've got sixty-three seconds.” _

“I'm on fucking vacation,” Harry said, but he was already turning to look. There was an older couple sitting on a bench, giggling like children at some joke even as the woman reached up to rub her left shoulder in discomfort. He wondered how long they had been together. “Someone else can't handle it? What's Jane up to?”

_ “Flu epidemic in Romania,” _ Mal said grimly. _ “Hasn't made the news yet; you wouldn't have heard. We had to send Doug out to help her. We're short staffed right now, and it's not fair to leave someone to do it alone when you're right there.” _

“I'm on _ vacation,” _ Harry repeated, then glanced at Uma and said in a lower voice, “There's a lot of people around.”

_ “So don't let them notice you. No one's gonna be paying attention in… twelve seconds now. You can disappear when they're not looking.” _

“Yeah, but there's someone who’ll–”

Mal clicked off. Harry swore violently, then turned to Uma with both hands raised placatingly. “Listen,” he said frantically, “this is gonna be horrible but–”

“Your phone just disappeared,” Uma said at the same time that someone screamed and a man’s voice yelled for a doctor. 

“God _ damn _ it,” Harry said, then flicked out of view and slipped over silently before the woman had stepped out of her own body. “Hi, love,” he said, crouching next to her. “Let me help you up.”

He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She was younger now, though only by a few years; her blonde hair was already streaked with grey and her face was creased with smile lines and crow's feet, and she didn't let go of his hand as he pulled her a few feet away. He kept them away from the crowd that was gathering; they would slip right through the bodies if they crossed paths with them. That was always disconcerting the first few times, and he didn't want to upset her. 

When she saw her own body lying on the ground, she swallowed hard. “Oh.”

“It's okay,” Harry said gently, squeezing her hand. “Didn't hurt, did it? Over and done, just like that.”

“Just like that,” she repeated. She sounded dazed. “So it's just… that's it?”

“That's it,” Harry confirmed. “Are you okay?”

“He won't remember to take his medicine,” she blurted out. “Harold. I have to remind him every morning. Our daughter will have to check on him each day.” She laughed. She couldn't cry, not like this, but it still sounded a little wet. “God, he's going to hate that. What are you smiling at?”

“You're sweet,” he told her simply. “He's a lucky man, that Harold.”

She hummed. “My name’s Eileen.” She didn't ask his name, but few people ever did. They all thought they knew it already. 

“Nice to meet you, Eileen.” He tugged her gently out of the way of someone running towards her body with a red box in hand. “Do you know where you're going?”

“Heaven?” she asked, a little anxiously. Harry smiled. 

“Sure,” he said gamely. “Do you know how to get there?”

Her brow furrowed as she opened her mouth, then her eyes cleared. “Oh,” she breathed, looking not up or down, but at something in the distance that wasn't meant for his eyes. “Yes. Yes, I believe I do.” Her smile was sunny and warm when she looked up at him. “Thank you, ah… What do I call you? Mr. Reaper?”

Harry grinned at her as she slipped her hand out of his and took a confident step forward. “You're not going to believe this,” he said, “but my name is Harry.”

Eileen’s laughter echoed sweetly as she stepped through a door that wasn't there and into her eternity. 

When Harry walked back, Uma was standing where he left her. “So,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That, uh, is… a thing. That happens sometimes.”

“Your face is a skull,” Uma said weakly. 

“That'll go away in a second,” Harry assured her, but she didn't seem to be listening.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, my ex is the grim reaper. Were you the grim reaper _ the entire time I knew you?” _

“I'm not even the grim reaper now,” Harry muttered. “Look, let's go somewhere we can talk, eh? I'm sort of, well, I'm invisible right now, but people will see you yelling at the empty air as soon as they're not distracted by, you know.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That.” 

“Did you kill her?” Uma asked, but she began walking away from the scene. Harry started. 

“What? No! Good god, we're not murderers. More like guides. It's just stressful to wake up on your own afterwards, that's all. There's no need to upset people. Where are we going?”

“Club,” Uma said grimly. Ha. “I'm going to drink my way through everything behind the bar before I let you tell me shit.”

“Sounds expensive,” Harry said mildly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Uma shook her head. 

“I own the place. I can drink until I pass out and no one will give a fuck.”

Harry ducked his head. “I, uh. I might do. You really shouldn't drink yourself to death.”

“Why,” Uma sneered, “or you'll reap me?”

“I just told you I'm not the grim reaper,” Harry said, exasperated. “There isn't a grim reaper. God, you fucking humans, why is everything so–”

Uma stopped in her tracks. “Us fucking– what?”

She looked unexpectedly horrified. Harry hesitated, not sure what he had done wrong, other than the obvious. Damn it, he _ really _shouldn't have come back home. 

“Humans?” he said slowly. It clicked, then. “Oh, god, I mean, I still consider myself a human, I think probably everyone but the core does, it's just better to call all of you that than some creepy nickname. I heard Chad tried to get ‘breathers’ going for a while, but I think that was probably just for shock value. It was before I started there.”

“Chad,” Uma said. 

“Oh, he's a coworker,” Harry offered. “Does the same thing as me, just on a larger scale. He's a bit of a dick, but–”

_ “Coworker,” _ Uma repeated, covered her face and let out a tiny, muffled scream into her hands. After a few seconds, she parted her fingers to look at him. “This is so fucked up,” she whispered. “This is _ so _ fucked up. I hope you realize just how fucked up this is.”

“I probably have a better understanding of how fucked up it is, actually,” Harry admitted. “Trust me, my boss is _ pissed, _ and she doesn't even know I met someone. Well, someone from before at least. We're allowed to interact, you know, but reconnecting is _ seriously _ frowned upon.”

“Please stop talking,” Uma mumbled and started walking again. “Just– I'm serious, I need a drink before I can even start to handle this.”

“Sure,” Harry said. He gnawed on his lip for a moment. “Where, uh, are we going?”

“Club, I told you,” Uma said dully. “I converted the chip shop when Mom retired a few years ago. That shitty sports bar shut down right after she left, so I figured I'd step in. Only place in town that serves real drinks.”

“That's smart,” Harry said, impressed. “Damn, you must make a killing during spring break.”

“Please stop talking,” Uma said through gritted teeth. “Like, about anything. At all. Play the fucking quiet game. Please.”

Harry blinked in surprise but nodded. Right. He had a different view of things. He'd always known Uma was alive, even if he hadn't expected to see her. Uma thought… well, she thought he'd be violently murdered a decade ago. Which wasn't technically _ wrong, _ but did mean that his sudden reappearance had to be more than a shock. 

He recognized the old building when they walked up to it, though it was significantly cleaner and less ramshackle than it had been when he was a teenager. He opened his mouth to say as much, caught sight of Uma’s face, and kept his thoughts to himself. 

She unlocked the door and stepped in, nearly letting the door slam in his face, then stalked across the room towards the bar. “Lock that,” she called over her shoulder. “We don't open for hours.”

Harry did, then trailed awkwardly behind her. When she stepped behind the bar, he slipped into a stool in front of her.

“So,” he began, but she held up a finger. 

“Not fucking yet. There it is.” She ducked down and emerged with a large bottle, which she opened and began to drink out of. Harry raised his eyebrows as she downed an almost concerning amount of vodka before lowering it and wiping her hand across the back of her mouth. “You want anything?”

“This is going to sound like bullshit,” he said, “but I'm something of a lightweight. I've only been here for a few weeks. I haven't exactly built up a tolerance.”

Uma took another swig. “Here, the town, or here, the…” She waved her free hand in a vague gesture. “World. Life. Whatever you call it.”

“World,” he said. “I've been in town maybe an hour. I was just about to leave, actually.”

Uma groaned. “Just my fucking luck, then.” Another long drink and a grimace, then she leaned forward and braced her elbows on the bar. “All right. Talk.”

“To answer your first question, I didn't fake my death,” he said. “I very definitely died.”

Uma made a punched-out noise. “I know,” she said. “I ID’d your body when they pulled you out of the river.”

“He threw me in the river?” Harry asked curiously, and then the rest of the sentence registered. “Oh, _ shit. _God, Uma, I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have had to see that.”

Uma shrugged and twisted the large bottle slowly between her hands. “So. So you really… you died. He really killed you.”

“Yeah,” Harry said softly. “He really did.”

“Did it hurt?” Uma asked, and her voice came out very small.

“I died pretty fast,” Harry said as gently as he could. “It didn't hurt long.”

Uma nodded and then didn't pick her head up. “But you… you're okay now.”

“Well, I'm dead.” Uma looked up to glare at him, and he couldn't help the little huff of laughter. “But yeah. All things considered, I'm doing all right.”

“How are you _ here, _ though?” she asked, almost desperate. “You've been dead ten years and what, they just let you come back to life?”

“Vacation,” Harry explained. “Ten years or so working, four months being alive on earth. Fun fact, if I die again while I'm here, they just bring me back again so I my vacation doesn't get cut short.”

Uma looked suddenly nauseated. He didn't think it was from drinking that much vodka in the space of three minutes. “That's not a fun fact,” she said faintly. “That– that's _ horrible.” _

“Is it?” Harry asked with a frown. “Oh. Sorry. You kind of… get used to these sorts of things. It's pretty nice for us. I guess it would be a little disturbing for you.”

“A little,” Uma muttered, then looked at the bottle and deliberately set it down. “So you weren't, like. Doing this when I knew you. That wasn't a four months on earth thing?”

“Nah,” Harry said. “I knew you for twelve years. How the hell could that be a vacation thing?”

“How the hell could _ this _ be a vacation thing?” Uma cried. “I'm still not convinced I'm not going insane.”

“Not going insane,” Harry assured her. “I mean, not that I'm aware of, at least. I'm not insane, anyways, and I'm here.”

“Not insane, says the grim reaper,” Uma muttered, and Harry groaned. 

“I'm not the grim reaper! There isn't a grim reaper. I'm just a greeter. Like at Walmart, kind of? But for dead people.”

“Walmart grim reaper,” Uma said with a smirk. “Okay, so what, you died and decided to just stick around saying hi to people?”

“I mean, basically.” Harry shrugged. “Someone came to get me. People go where they expect to go when they die, and I… didn't expect anything nice.” His mouth twisted. “Ben came to pick me up, and when I said I thought I was going to hell, he offered me something else.”

“What's the interview process for that like?” Uma asked dryly, and Harry snickered. 

“Mostly just checking that I'd be okay doing it. Lots of ‘it's going to be sad’ and ‘sometimes people die bloody.’ And there's me, half eviscerated, being told that _ some people die bloody.” _ He snorted, then winced when Uma looked a little ill. “Sorry. I guess I shouldn't talk about it.”

“They had you covered up,” she muttered. “All I could see was your face. I mean, I knew that you– what happened, it was all in the news and shit, but.” She sighed again. “It really was fast?”

It wasn't. It was a half hour writhing in pain and begging the universe to let him die already, knowing that his father was out there somewhere looking for him. He had thought about Uma, how he would never see her again, and that had hurt almost as much as his torn-open guts. 

“Yeah,” he said. “It was over quick.”

“You're still a shitty liar,” Uma mumbled around the mouth of the bottle, then groaned and rubbed her temples. “God. So you're the Walmart greeter of the afterlife, you have a dead coworker named _ Chad, _ and vacation entails being turned into a zombie.”

“I wouldn't say zombie,” Harry said. “But that's the gist of it, yeah. I'm just sorry I ran into you. I really didn't mean to, you know, dredge up bad memories or anything. We're not supposed to go near where anyone might know us. It's like witness protection. Can't blow our cover.”

“So why are you here?” Uma asked with a weak laugh. “You weren't, I mean. Were you… checking on me, or something?”

“I didn't even know you were here,” Harry said honestly. “I thought you would have moved by now. I just wanted a mango smoothie from that place by the convenience store.”

Uma burst out laughing. She bent over the bar, shaking with it, and Harry caught the bottle before it could tip over. While Uma was distracted, he set it carefully down at his feet. He wasn't sure that she should have any more. 

“You came back,” she wheezed, “and broke _ the literal laws of death, _ for a fucking smoothie?”

“They're good,” Harry said defensively, but Uma didn't hear him, laughing so hard she was crying—or maybe just crying. 

“I can't– fucking– believe you!” she said, gasping for breath. “A fucking _ smoothie!” _She laughed again, then choked on a sob. 

“Hey,” Harry said gently. “It's okay, Uma. It is.”

“You were– you were dead,” she said, giggling and hiccuping and crying all at once. “You died and I had to look at your body and say, ‘That's him,’ and then I had to fucking move on with my life without you, which was never the plan, and I couldn't even be _ mad _ at you because it wasn't your–” Her voice broke. So did Harry's heart, a little. “It has been,” Uma said shakily, “a long ten years.”

“You deserved better,” he said softly. “I'm sorry for coming back. I didn't mean for anyone to see me.”

“I guess, I mean.” Uma sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Harry grimaced. “I'm glad, you know. To see that things worked out okay. They did, right? You're, I mean, you like it? You're happy?”

“I am, yeah,” Harry said, twisting absently back and forth on the stool. “I get to meet people. I like helping. Sometimes people are scared, and I can make them feel better.”

Uma offered him a weak smile. “You always were a softy. I missed that about you. You were sweet. Are sweet, I guess.” She looked down and added softly, “I missed a lot of things about you.”

“Yeah,” Harry said around the sudden lump in his throat. “I missed you, too.”

“I really loved you, you know.” Her voice was subdued, and she wouldn't look at him. “More than anything. I thought we were gonna be together the rest of our lives. S’stupid.”

“Not really. I mean. Even at the end, I was thinking about you. I–” He laughed a little weakly. “I guess one of us was.”

Uma did look up then, blinking slowly. “Was what?”

“For the rest of our lives,” Harry said. “My life."

Uma let out a bark of laughter. “I can't decide if that's horrible or really funny.”

“Probably horrible, knowing me,” Harry said and then wasn't sure what else to say. 

Uma seemed to have the same probably. “So you…” She hesitated, eyeing him cautiously. “You don't, like, age…?”

“Ah, no, not really,” Harry said. “I mean, I can change my appearance if I want to, but I don't know how I would look if I were alive now. Eighteen is the oldest I ever got. My bosses, though, they can do anything from an infant to hundreds of years old. It's eerie.”

“Bosses,” Uma said. “You said there's no grim reaper. So who's in charge? Or wait, shit, can you tell me any of this? Are you gonna, like, wipe my mind after this?”

“Oh no, no,” Harry said quickly. “We don't do that sort of thing. Couldn't even if we wanted to. We're not that powerful, really. Just traveling and talking to dead folks, and the tiniest bit of shapeshifting. Nothing major.”

“That's… actually pretty major,” Uma said, then held up a finger. “Ugh, give me a second, I need some water. This is just hitting my system. I'll be right back.”

She disappeared into the kitchen, then poked her head out a second later. “You sure you don't want anything? We've got soda and fruit juice, if you don't want booze. Or just water.” Her mouth twitched in something like a smile. “No smoothies, though.”

“Har har,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. “Soda would be good. What's that, um, the brown one? It had bubbles. That's soda, right?” Uma stared at him. “I used to drink it a lot,” he offered. 

“Root beer,” Uma said finally. “You really liked root beer.”

Harry snapped his fingers. “Yes! God, it was on the tip of my tongue. I was thinking about it the other day, but I couldn't remember what it was called and I didn't want to look like an idiot.”

“You still look like an idiot,” Uma called over her shoulder, but she returned to the kitchen and returned a moment later holding a bottle of water and a brown can. “‘The bubbly brown one,’” she repeated as she handed him the soda, shaking her head. “God. Can't believe I forgot how stupid you are. 

“Hey,” Harry protested. “You shouldn't speak ill of the dead.”

“You're not dead right now,” Uma retorted. “I'll start respecting your memory again in a few months.” 

Harry snickered as he popped the can open and tried a sip. “Holy _ shit,” _ he gasped, then chugged half of it. “This is so good. How did I forget _ root beer?” _

“I told you,” Uma said. “You're stupid.” She was grinning, but her voice was a little wobbly around the edges. “You… you seriously don't remember. You don't remember what _ soda _tastes like.”

Harry shrugged uncomfortably. “It's not like I've been drinking much of it the last few years,” he said. “I don't remember what much of anything tastes like, actually. That's why I wanted a damn smoothie so bad. And now, well.” He waved his free hand helplessly. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Uma agreed. “So tell me about these bosses of yours.”

Harry took another gulp and held it for a moment, savoring the taste and the way the bubbles popped against the inside of his mouth. “Okay,” he said once he had swallowed, “so they're called the core. And they've been doing this a long time.”

“Doing like… what you do?” Uma hesitated over the words. He guessed it was easier to tease him about it than to say “guiding people to the afterlife.” 

He nodded all the same. “Or they used to, at least. They sort of point the rest of us in the right direction these days. Mal especially is good at sensing when people are going to, you know.” He shrugged. “Die.”

“Used to,” Uma said. “So they were, though. They're people who died. Are all of you?”

“Far as I know, yeah.” Harry gnawed on his lower lip. “It's… time doesn't work the same way for us. But even I can tell that they've been at this for way longer than the rest of us. Jane, uh, Jane told me that—and I don't know if this is true—but some people think they might have been the first people ever to die. Way back whenever the world started.” He leaned forward, eyes widening a little as he said, “They're old. _ Really _ old, the kind that hurts your head to think about, because numbers that big shouldn't have anything to do with people. And they're powerful, after this long. They can do things the rest of us can't.”

“Right,” Uma said faintly. “Ancient, impossible death gods, and you're on a first name basis with one of them.”

“Oh, all four of them,” Harry said. “They're actually pretty chill. Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos. Carlos has a black dog named Dude.”

“Death god has a dog,” Uma said. “Cool. Cool.”

“And I wouldn't really call them gods,” Harry added thoughtfully, leaning back again. “I mean, they're powerful as all hell, but they're still people under all that. They're… nice, I guess. Evie's sweet, especially. They all are, in their own way. Jay showed me the ropes when I first started, after Ben brought me onboard, because Ben and Mal were off doing whatever Ben and Mal do and couldn't help. Jay taught me how to recognize it, how to move, what to do. How to help.”

“That woman at the boardwalk,” Uma said, eyes widening. “You got a phone call. And then she died. And you disappeared.”

“I was right there,” Harry said, looking down at his soda so he wouldn't have to look at Uma. “It wouldn't have been fair to let her wake up alone when I was so close. Not surrounded by strangers like that.”

“You talked to her,” Uma said. “I couldn't see you; you disappeared while I was looking right at you. But you talked to her.”

“Her name was Eileen,” Harry said. “She's okay. She went to heaven.”

“Because she expected to go there,” Uma said slowly. “Because you just… go wherever you want to, you said.”

“Where you expect,” Harry corrected. “Just wanting would make it easier. But you know what they say. People make their own heavens. Or something, I think that was the quote.”

“But you didn't,” Uma said, nearly cutting him off. “You– you thought you were– you said–”

She couldn't finish the sentence. Harry sighed. 

“I was eighteen. My dad had been beating me half to death on a regular basis since I was a kid. My sister disappeared on us first chance she got. I… sort of thought that everyone was going to hell. Well, not Gil.” He tried for teasing as he added, “And _ probably _not you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Uma muttered. “Harriet came to your funeral, you know. And testified at the trial.”

Harry froze at that. “She… did?” Uma nodded. “How did she even know? No one could find her for years.”

“Some people die bloody,” Uma said, repeating his words from earlier, then recited dully, “‘California teen disappears. California teenager’s body pulled from river. California man arrested for son’s murder. Former Navy captain James Hook found guilty for the murder of his teenage son.’” Her voice cracked. “California town holds candlelight vigil in memory of murdered teen.’”

Harry realized distantly that his mouth was hanging open. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “So it made, what? National news?” Uma nodded. “They… really fixated on the age thing.”

“Wanted to drive home how fucked up the whole thing was, I guess.” Uma looked tired. “You were young. You were _ really _young.”

“So were you,” Harry said gently. “We all were.”

“They interviewed me,” Uma said in a low voice. “The cops, like three times. Then reporters kept trying and I'd never answer anything.”

“I'm sorry,” Harry said. It felt useless, every time he said it, but apologies were all he had left for her. She just shrugged. 

“Not like you asked him to kill you. Not your fault.”

“Still sorry.” He set his soda down finally and braced his elbows on the bar so he could rub his temples. “So it's been a shitty ten years for you.”

“I mean, not all of it,” Uma admitted. “It's– I missed you. I never stopped missing you. But it's been better, you know, the last few years. Rough around anniversaries. The hard ones, you know, the funeral and the first day we realized you were gone. But then things like…” Her mouth twisted, and her voice was so soft he could barely hear it when she said, “Our anniversary. First kiss. Day we met. We always celebrated our first show, too, remember?”

“August second,” Harry said. “Two thousand and four. God, we were bad.”

“We were _ horrible,” _Uma laughed. “And we knew it. But hell if we were gonna let that stop us.”

“The Lost Revenge World Tour,” Harry said reminiscently. “We probably would have done it, too. Crazy bastards, all of us.”

Uma hummed and didn't say anything. Harry bit his tongue, opened his mouth, then shut it again and bit his tongue harder. Uma snickered. “Out with it.”

“It's shitty.”

Uma shrugged. “So? When did that ever stop you? You've never had a filter.”

“I just.” Harry grimaced, sighed, and finally blurted, “Are you, I mean… seeing anyone, these days, or…”

Uma hummed, and Harry lifted the soda to his mouth just for something to do with his hands. “Don't be weirded out by this,” Uma began, and Harry began drinking almost desperately, “but Gil and I have fucked a few times.”

Harry choked, and Uma began laughing. He coughed and pounded on his chest while she cackled at him. “Did you–” He hacked a few times, cleared his throat, then rasped, “Did you fucking wait until I took a drink to tell me that?”

“You can't die,” Uma said smugly. “If you choke, you choke.”

Harry mulled that over for a moment. She wasn't entirely right—he could die, he just couldn't stay dead—but it didn't seem worth it to bring that up. “Have you, though? I mean, really?”

“Yeah,” Uma said. She seemed amused more than anything else. “It's never been serious; we're still friends. Just sometimes we lock the door for a weekend and go at it. Stress relief for both of us. Dated a few people here and there over the years. Nothing serious.”

Harry mulled that over, then asked, “So is Gil still in town too, then?” 

Uma shook her head. “Just south of L.A. Comes back to visit pretty regularly, though. I can’t take a lot of time off, running this place, but he stops in a couple times a year. We-” She snorted suddenly. “It actually feels kind of stupid now. We go visit your grave sometimes.”

Harry paused. “That’s… not stupid. I hadn’t thought about it, that I have a grave. I guess a lot of the details kind of slipped by.”

“Well, you were dead,” Uma said reasonably. “There was a funeral. And a vigil. And a grave, still. Harriet gets flowers delivered every other week.”

“How nice of her,” Harry said, and was surprised to find that he meant it, a little. It was nice. It was barely anything, but it was nice. “What is she… doing?” he asked hesitantly. “I haven’t heard from her in, god, almost twenty years now. Where’d she go?”

“To live with her mom,” Uma said, and Harry nodded. He had guessed as much. “You remember that time when we were like, ten, just right after, when the cops showed up at your house? Apparently she called them. She was too scared to do it while she was still there. I guess she thought she’d be arrested, too, for not saying anything sooner.”

“She was fifteen,” Harry said blankly. “The hell would they arrest her for?”

“Were you thinking clearly about anything when you were fifteen?” Uma asked with a snort. “She was a kid, man. She didn’t know anything.”

“You…” Harry hesitated. “You don’t seem mad at her.”

Uma shrugged. “Neither do you. It was a long time ago, even for us fucking humans. She was younger than I am now. Younger than I was, then. I forgave her.”

“I haven’t,” Harry said honestly. “But I forgot. I guess that’s close enough.”

They sat in silence for a while while Uma sipped his water and Harry drank his root beer, eyeing her carefully in case she decided to drop any more bombs on him. When she was done, she set the empty bottle carefully on the bar. Harry, who had been matching her sip for sip to make sure neither of them was left with a half-empty drink when the other started talking again, swallowed the last dregs of his soda and set the can down across from hers.

“So what now?” Uma asked quietly. She didn’t look up at him. 

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. He didn’t look at her, either, just focused on the empty can and the lingering taste of root beer in his mouth. “We’ve caught up. We know we’re okay. I should leave. Let the both of us move on.”

“Yeah,” Uma said, tracing absent circles on the counter top with with one finger. “I am glad, you know. That you didn’t just… stop. That always felt like the worst part. That you got eighteen years and then nothing. You were so young.” She did look up then, shaking her head and letting out a soft, disbelieving laugh. “You still _ look _ so young.”

“And you look like you’re nearly thirty,” Harry said, smiling a little crookedly. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I guess I thought you wouldn’t have changed at all.”

“I did change. You did, too.”

Neither of them spoke for a while.

“For what it’s worth,” Harry finally said, “I wish things had been different. It would have been nice to try it out. Life, I mean. Life with you. I would have liked to see it.”

“Yeah,” Uma said softly. “Me too.”

She smiled at him, soft and sweet and warm and bitter, the goodbye they didn’t get ten years ago.

Then she grabbed him by the the collar at the same moment he surged forward, letting her drag him halfway across the bar to kiss her.

**Author's Note:**

> While there's nothing graphic, there are a lot of references to a very bloody death on Harry's part. They talk pretty frankly about it (Harry refers to himself as "half-eviscerated" at one point and references "torn up guts," which is as graphic as this fic gets) and the events that followed. Harry makes some jokes about his murder that Uma, who had to deal with the fallout of his death as a teenager, doesn't appreciate at first, until she gets on board with the gallows humor. 
> 
> Alcohol is imbibed. Child abuse is referenced. Harry's fraught relationship with his sister is discussed. There's just, like, a lot.


End file.
